


Scapegoat

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Biblical References, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:12:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Rory: #also sam and dean as sacrificial scapegoats hgjfdkgdsgs someone write the fic where sam ties red string around his finger</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scapegoat

Sam tries to sleep with the Stanford acceptance letter under his pillow.

There’s blood under his fingernails, the faint taste of gunshot in his mouth even though he’s washed Listerine over his tongue and his gums, gargled it in his throat until he almost choked and Dean slapped him on the back, Easy there, Sammy.

Their bags are already packed, loaded with shotguns and rock salt and a snipped out newspaper clipping, folded and highlighted.

The next hunt.

Sam’s too big in his skin or too small—he can’t tell with his ankles hanging off the edge of the bed—and he curls his blanket through his knuckles, bites down on his pillow until his mouth floods with spit and he tastes dust and cotton until the urge to let a voice that wouldn’t sound quite human out of his throat is gone.

He hocks dry air to get rid of the taste, crawls out of bed, opens up his bag, catalogues the crap he’s got in there.

He thinks about taking out the guns, but figures that symbolic gestures are hollow and a good way to get killed.

They’re light sleepers though—comes from a lifetime of hunting. Dad wakes up first, though maybe Dean was just pretending to be asleep.

Sam tries to explain. Stanford. A normal life. You know, one without monsters, one where they devote their time to other things besides the next hunt, besides hunting down the thing that killed their mother, and dad’s eyes sharpen up and he tightens up his arm, coils up his muscles so that they won’t see him tremble and shake but Sam sees, Sam has always seen, and he’s sick of it as he tells about a life where they don’t have to live like this—if it could even be called proper living—as he tries to scrape the dried up blood from under his nails without looking down.

If you leave, don’t ever come back, Dad says.

Fine, Sam says, refusing to look at Dean.

He leaves later that night. Never comes back.

Years pass. Big brother shows up. They dig more graves. Put more of their lives in wooden boxes.

Stuff happens.

Like he’s got demon in blood in him. Like angels are real.

Like is there a baptism cleansing enough in the entire world for an angel to take his hand?

Perhaps Castiel could see the sulphur smudged deep under his skin, licked into him by Ruby’s tongue.

But whoever said a demon couldn’t help save the world, couldn’t want to see it saved instead of watching it burn?

Ruby’s blood slicks his hand when he and Dean wait against a closed door for Lucifer to ascend. Flows between his fingers and trickles in the grooves of his skin, where Ruby’s fingernails have left their mark. 

Leaves again. Because he started the apocalypse. He hadn’t meant to, but he had.

So he slices limes at the local bar. With each glide of the blade, he remembers what Father Jim had told them. The first sin of the world was Eve eating the apple.

Har, fucking har, he thinks, savagely. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Apples are fucking healthy.

If Sam and Dean had known even half the things they should have known—

The knife slips, and he cuts his finger, bleeding over everything, over the fruit and so they’re no good for margaritas any more—

The first sin, really, as water runs over the wound, washing it clean, was the first kill, Sam thinks, the first hunt. Cain bashing his brother over the head with a rock.

Sam blinks, flinching, mouth pursing.

You okay, one of his coworkers ask.

Yeah just fucking stings, he says back.

More stuff happens. Like he’s the devil’s meat suit and like he’s fucking surprised.

He dresses. Pulls on that red floral patterned shirt that Dean hates so goddamned much, asshole.

It’s tattered at the cuffs, red petals unraveling. He pulls at it with his fingers, other hand playing with the phone in his pocket as he calls up his brother, hey guess what.

His eyes sting, like he’s got lemon in his eyes, when Dean thinks they stop the apocalypse in different hemispheres.

He plays with the red thread, pulls and hears the quiet whispering tear of fabric coming undone.

Don’t come back.

He tugs harder, breaks the thread, so he ties it around his finger, ties it so tight the skin swells up blue and purple and its so numb, can’t even feel the cut anymore.

Nearly jumps when the phone rings again. 

Then Dean’s voice in his ears, “Come back.”

Sam nods.

Don’t play with dead things, Dean had said once a long time ago, Sam remembers as he clenches the steering wheel. He feels his pulse throb under the red thread, pumping blood through his limbs and his organs. First he had died—fitting perhaps, because if he had stayed dead—

If he had never come back, none of this would have ever happened (ignore the voice that says they would have just dragged him back, put him back together again, stuff him in a pine-board box gasping for air).

He wonders what would happen if he just jerks the car off a cliff, metal and bone shattering as one.

Nothing, probably.

Still, he smiles when Dean says they keep each other human.

It’s the only thing he can do, after all.


End file.
